BARB JUNGR, "Queen of musical cabaret." TIME OUT confirms her position as Britain's leading chansonnier - interpreter of dramatic popular song, with this summer's international release of her new CD by Linn Records on June 18th.
CHANSON - THE SPACE IN BETWEEN
The album mixes radical reworkings of contemporary songs from English-language songwriters with French material in surprising new translations of standards of the chansons genre with established translations. The result is a dream of Paris, both evoking the chansons tradition and reworking it in the context of 21st century Britain.
Barb cut her teeth as a singer and performer on the alternative cabaret circuit, earning an armful of awards including a Perrier, but over the past few years she's developed into one of our finest and most distinctive performers and singers, with an exhilarating vocal style that fuses her blues and soul roots with elements of everything from theatre song to African and Iranian folk singing.
Her capacity to express emotion through well-known songs, rendering them almost new to the ear, is second to none. Her one woman shows at venues and festivals across the country have taken an evergrowing audience on a series of intellectual and emotional journeys in song, drawing on a vast repertoire from jazz, pop and blues standards to European writers like Brecht, Jacques Brel and Edith Piaf.
With this new CD, Barb explores further that European side to her work and personal history; drawing on the chanson tradition of intelligent and literate popular song performed with total commitment and feeling. In doing so she reflects a growing British interest in the work of figures like Brel, and a demand to hear these songs in versions that accurately reflect their writers' intentions, not always respected when English-speaking singers performed such material in the past.
CHANSON: THE SPACE IN BETWEEN, released by Linn on June 18, features specially commissioned translations of Brel and his contemporary Léo Ferré (whose stunningly poetic songs are almost unknown in the English speaking world) by London-based chansonniers Des de Moor and Robb Johnson, including a faithful reworking of Brel's most famous song, "Ne me quitte pas", which will surprise those who only know it as "If you go away". Alongside these renditions of Jacques Prévert by Fran Landesman, works from Edith Piaf's repertoire and English-language songs from the likes of Elvis Costello, Robb Johnson, Yip Harburg, Cole Porter, Jungr and James Tomalin. |
